Pictures!

I promised you pictures and I delivered!! What you see to the left is the view from my hotel balcony. The bottom part are what I affectionately refer to as 'the slums'. Its a place I'd avoid at night. Not that I have any hard facts, its just clearly not a place where westerners go much, let alone alone at night. Its fascinating to walk though during the day, very busy with little noodle houses being run out of peoples own kitchen. One room apartments with just a kitchen and a bed in it. Its poor, but people seem to make do as best they can. I can't say if there is high crime there, it looks very settled and peaceful. Beyond that you can see the buildings by the river and eventually the East Side (the business side). Its just loads of sky scrappers full of businessmen that stretches on and on. You can see a pretty good mix of China in this photo, the two worlds within Shanghai itself (three if you count the foreigner taking the photo).

This second photo is from the temple I mentioned in my last post. People would bow with incense to the 4 directions and then place the remaining incense in that box in the middle to burn off. You'll notice neither of these pictures is sunny. It hasn't been sunny really, and I don't expect it to be any time soon. It's constantly a little bit cloudy, a perpetual state of overcast, a consequence of the smog and pollution.

I think I've found a place to live now. I'll be able to move out of my apartment, but the problem is that I am supposed to be out of my apartment by Jan 2, but can't move in until Jan 13. I'll figure it out (maybe stay in a hostel). But the funny thing about it is the guy I'm renting from (or taking the place of) is not only American, but from my home town and our parents are friends and I graduated high school with his brother! Its a small world sometimes.

I don't have much to say about Christmas. I went to a marathon 2 1/2 hour long church service all in Chinese (there was thankfully a lot of singing and pageantry). I was a little bit harder to enjoy because I spent a lot of time someone would try to pick my pocket in the crowded church on Christmas, so that was a big Christmas downer [ so was being away from my family ]. To be honest I'm glad Christmas is over and I'm just excited to pick up my new suit next week.